Architecture students journey to Spain to sketch the great buildings of Barcelona

Postcards From the Classroom Abroad: Barcelona Architectural Drawing Intensive

Image by Maria Rabinovich ’07—illustration of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (architect: Richard Meier)

From the animated streets of Barcelona, Spain, rise buildings dating from Roman times to the 1992 Olympics. These include the gothic church Santa Maria del Mar, the primary works of Antoni Gaudí, Jean Nouvel’s Torre Agbar, and designs by Mies van der Rohe, Richard Meier. One might argue that, of the lot, Gaudí’s architecture, with its luxe curvaceousness, is the most memorable. But the nine Bennington College students who went to Barcelona last January with architecture faculty member Donald Sherefkin did not need to remember; they took the Barcelona Architectural Drawing Intensive with the understanding that what they saw, they would draw.

“In the book The Art of Travel,” says Sherefkin, “Alain de Botton talks about how when people travel they feel the need to bring back something. We have this desire to preserve our memory. But he says you can’t really own a memory with a photo. If you make a careful drawing of something, though, you have a good chance of keeping it.” In addition to The Rough Guide to Barcelona and a book by Time art critic Robert Hughes called Barcelona: the Great Enchantress, Sherefkin compiled a set of essays for the three-week course, and among them was a chapter from de Botton’s book.*

All of the students had taken classes in the visual arts, although some of them had never studied architecture. The group stayed 10 minutes from Barcelona’s center in a Salesian seminary, which itself, says Sherefkin, “was quite beautiful. It was a whole city block and had a walled courtyard filled with gardens of tropical plants, fountains, moss-covered stones, and amazing birdlife.” Each morning the students would visit a significant building or museum—such as the Museu Picasso or the Fundació Miró—for on-site drawing. Occasionally they moved from drawing buildings to drawing buskers—and the abundant “living statues” among the outdoor cafes, flower stands, and market stalls. But after a casual lunch, they would reconvene at the local architecture school, where Sherefkin led them in drawing exercises until around eight o’clock, when they would break for dinner and return to the seminary. “The students were on such a rigorous schedule,” says Sherefkin with a twinkle, “that they had to lobby for time to sight-see.”

Of the Architectural Drawing Intensive, Sherefkin now says, “The experience of nine people occupying a public space for the purpose of intense observation and drawing was enlightening. There is a peculiar power which this activity engenders, giving us almost a sense of ownership of the place.” Sherefkin hopes to combine the next Architectural Drawing Intensive with art history—by co-teaching it with literature faculty member (and author of the New York Times 2006 Editor’s Choice, Falling Palace) Dan Hofstadter in Sorrento, Italy, in winter 2008.

*In “On Possessing Beauty,” from The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton states, “[Through drawing] we may move from a numb ‘I like this’ to a more exacting ‘I like this because…’, and then in turn towards a generalization about the likeable. Even if they are held in exploratory, tentative ways, laws of beauty come to mind: it is better for light to strike objects from the side than overhead; grey goes well with green; in order for a street to convey a sense of space, the buildings must be no taller than the street is wide. And on the basis of this conscious awareness, more solid memories can be founded. Carving our name on Pompey’s Pillar begins to seem unnecessary. Drawing allows us, in Ruskin’s account, ‘to stay the cloud in its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing.’”

More:

• Architecture at Bennington
• Jean Nouvel’s Torre Agbar
• Architecture by Antoni Gaudi
• Museu Picasso
• Fundació Miró
• Applying to Bennington

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